


Rough Cut

by ohgodmyeyes



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anakin Skywalker is Fucking Crazy, Bewilderment, Blood, Blue-Collar Anakin Skywalker, Disjointed, Disregard this, Dissociation, Gen, Humour if you squint?, Identity Issues, Just for me, Mental Health Issues, Mental Illness, Mental Instability, Nonsense, One Shot, Self-Destruction, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Voices?, self injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:28:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26632876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohgodmyeyes/pseuds/ohgodmyeyes
Summary: One morning at the tombstone factory, Anakin makes a rash decision— one which nobody (including, perhaps, himself) is liable to ever understand.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Himself
Comments: 16
Kudos: 24





	Rough Cut

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know. Don't bother with this; it's not hot or anything, and it makes no sense. This moment just wouldn't get out of my head no matter how hard I tried to exorcise it without writing it down, and now I'm sharing it pretty much just because it's complete.
> 
> Sexy fluff next time— I promise. I've started plenty. I truly just couldn't get anything nice done until I got this out of my brain.

Anakin looked in the mirror that morning, but he didn't quite recognize what he saw. That was okay; that happened to him sometimes. 

"Don't look at me like that," he said to his reflection, and then he shot it a glare when it didn't obey. _Fine,_ he thought bitterly. _Be that way._

It didn't matter whether his reflection was listening to him or not, because Anakin had to be at work. He didn't especially like his work, but if he didn't go, then he wouldn't be able to pay his rent; if he couldn't pay his rent, then where would he live? His girlfriend wouldn't appreciate it if he were homeless; it would piss her off— and when Padmé was pissed off at Anakin, nothing mattered to him. Cyclically, if nothing mattered to him, then he wouldn't go to work. 

So, Anakin got into his car that morning after staring resentfully for a while at himself, and drove to the factory; the tombstone factory. It was a whole granite processing facility, really, but Anakin mostly just made tombstones. They were always in high demand. Granite was the best thing to use for grave markers, and it was Anakin's job to shape the heavy slabs of it dug up from the nearby quarry into door-shapes and cross-shapes and angel-shapes. Once he had, they would be sent down the line to a different worker, whose job it was to engrave them. Anakin did engravings once in a while; he had somewhat of a talent for it, in fact... but, his primary duty was to move and cut the raw stones, and so that was what he most often did.

It made him strong, at least, and his girlfriend liked that, too.

She liked it almost as much as she liked the fact that he wasn't homeless.

So, Anakin did his job. 

He'd been to work feeling strange before, but perhaps not quite _this_ kind of strange. He felt like he was floating that day; conversely, he also felt a bit like he'd been driven solidly into the ground by a sledgehammer. The sensations both alternated and coexisted, and by the time he got to his workstation, he truly couldn't discern one from the other. The way that person in the glass in his bathroom had looked at him that morning was still pissing him off.

The granite was late; why the fuck was the granite late? That quarry ran all goddamn night— the granite should never be late.

Anakin wished, now, that he hadn't rushed to get to work... _but,_ if he hadn't rushed, then he'd have had to stare at that stupid fucking bastard in the mirror for far longer than he'd have liked. That guy was a dick; Anakin could tell just by looking at him.

So, he supposed he was glad to be here. He had apparently bought a coffee on his way in; he might not have remembered purchasing it, but it was sitting beside his big, round diamond-tipped saw, _and_ it was still warm... so he figured he must have picked it up that morning. As he took it in his hand (his right hand; his dominant hand— the hand he did nearly everything with), he looked upon the edge of his blade. He'd only replaced it yesterday; it was fresh and sharp, and absolutely perfect. Even if Anakin was not too fond of his job, he certainly did like his diamond blade.

"Shut up," he mumbled, in response to a sound nobody else could ever have heard. He hated when his mind spoke to itself; it was always talking shit. Where was his granite? People were dying all the time; dying as he stood and waited, and they couldn't be buried without stones. 

_"Shut the fuck up,"_ he hissed once more, again speaking in opposition to a voice no one else could possibly have registered. Anakin's co-workers were used to him taking to himself, though, and besides that, the tombstone factory was cacophonously loud. Nobody paid any mind to him, particularly not when he was like this. Everyone knew that Anakin was typically best left to his own devices.

Where was his goddamn motherfucking granite?

Anakin stood and ran his eyes across his workstation as he sipped that coffee of his; the one whose origin he was beginning to realize he couldn't discern no matter how hard he tried. There was a hospital-grade face-mask next to his saw, a set of industrial ear-plugs, and a box of extra blades. The mask was for the airborne debris generated by the grinding of the big stones; Anakin's saw was electric, and so he had to use it dry. That meant lots of dust. The ear-plugs were for the potentially deafening noise of the saw itself, although the grinding and whining stuck in his head all night every night when he went home, with or without them. 

The extra blades were there, of course, because they had to be frequently replaced. The tips of the circular cutting devices weren't made entirely of diamond, because that would have been impractical: Instead, they were made of metal, and little chunks of diamond were set into them, ready to meet and grind whatever stone he happened to be cutting into the shape of some other, less fortunate person's final earthly purchase.

Were the dead really all that unfortunate, though? You didn't have to cut granite all day if you were dead, did you? 

"Shut _up,"_ Anakin tried once again, although it was to no avail. He was beginning to feel anxious because although he was ready to work, there was nothing to do. Anakin had never thrived at times like these; his hands were always happier when they were occupied. 

Images began to fly through his mind; they were disjointed and connected to one another only tenuously. Some of them were of things he recognized, and others were of things he was quite sure he'd never seen before. Anakin was not very good at quieting his mind; as much as he disliked the noise of the factory, it at least kept the clamouring of his thoughts at bay. 

He leaned onto the table, then, coffee still in hand as he supported himself with his elbows. He looked at his saw from the perspective of the rocks he would normally have been cutting by now, and thought. He thought for a few very long moments— maybe by the time he was finished, his material would be here and he could start to work.

Those moments passed all too quickly, though, and to his own dismay, he had no such luck. 

"Okay," he said to the fucker from the mirror in his bathroom. "That'll be just fine."

After that, he stood part of the rest of the way up, and went on to reach over himself to switch on his tool. He didn't put on his mask or his earplugs, and he didn't put down his coffee. He did make sure his head was well out of the way; however, the scream of the blade coming to life overtook his senses anyhow.

It was a bit of a rougher cut than he'd have expected, but really, the diamond blade was more for steady grinding than outright slicing. It was certainly still sharp enough that his arm (his right arm; the one holding onto his coffee) was severed before he knew it. The saw had cut through it effortlessly very close to his elbow, and as he stood up straight, he witnessed both it and his sourceless drink fall to the floor together with a dull thump rendered inaudible by the noise of the tool itself. 

It didn't take long for the blood to start flowing; it volcanoed out from the messy stump he'd left attached to his body, and oozed unreservedly from the detached, stark-white limb on the floor, mingling with his spilled coffee and cream. The cream rendered some of the red a delightful shade of pink; a pink not unlike one of his girlfriend's nicer dresses, but that didn't last long— soon, the blood overtook it, and plentiful, unapologetic crimson was all there was to see.

The last thing Anakin did before he fell was grin, because he felt as though he'd just won a game. He wasn't floating anymore, nor was he buried up to his neck in the floor. 

Finally, he just was.

As his consciousness faded and the sound of heavy work boots rushing over to see what the fuck had happened at his station drew near, he closed his eyes... but he didn't stop grinning. He couldn't. 

He did wonder what the asshole from the mirror would think of what he'd done, if and when he ever managed to wake up.


End file.
